This Much We Know

My gad! There is a lot of randomness out there; people applying (I assume) for anything and everything. Gone are the days when you had to consider your job-applying time and ROI. Today you can auto apply for everything on the market. Like spam-avoiding phone tools, there should be some kind of “Confirm you are a human being thinking logically and understand the job description,” before they let…

The theme of #iwd2024 is “inspire inclusion.” I was writing something this week about inclusion and asked MS Teams AI to generate some images of “Women in 2024.” I got exactly what I expected – groups of young, attractive women standing really close to each other in some kind of positive spirituality moment. Archetypical stock images. Apparently, women can only be “empowered”. It bothered me, so…

ChatGPT and the end of the world.

I opened my TikTok the other day and had probably 20 posts trying to impress me about ChatGPT and just how amazing / scary / dystopian / innovative it is. Same on my twitter feed. If you don’t know what it is yet, get on it quickly – because it is coming to a conversation in your professional life very soon; and definitely a end-of-year party where you can bamboozle your drunk boss. The biggest…

A way to reflect on privilege is not so much “I was given advantages over others.” Many of us were not born with a silver spoon in our mouths, have experienced struggle and challenge, and worked hard to overcome. Instead, think of it as things we do NOT need to consider in our everyday lives. I was recently visiting family in Quebec, and was asked to buy some items at the supermarket. My spoken…

Abortion benefits us all.

I have an abortion story. A story I have never shared with anyone. Spoiler alert: there is no heroic arc to this story for me. I have never shared it because I was able to forget about it, parcel it up and move on with my life, a simple and momentary stumble in my serene, privileged journey. I share it today in solidarity with women. I believe in a woman’s right to choose. As a male, I should…

I have never once given TikTok any direction, except my Likes and eyeballs. Since day one, I have let the FYP (for you page) deliver an assortment of creative content from around the world. It started out as a lot of dog videos and dance moves, morphed towards lip synchs and audio mash-ups, and these days, it is mainly first-person pithy narrative on the state of the world. And when I say state…

People, in all their dimensions and intersections

Leadership is a change and learning journey. Here is something to work on in 2022: People, in all their dimensions and intersections. Go back to a time when you were a IC (individual contributor), and someone gave you your first leadership opportunity. They asked you to learn, grow, and change – to put others’ needs first and orient around them. DIBs (diversity, inclusion, belonging) is the…

Let’s (consciously) examine our own behaviour. Our amygdala, the most ancient part of our brains, the part that manages fight or flight, floods stress hormones into our brain when put in unexpected situations. This happens when we meet people who are different. This is a natural barrier to understanding, comfort, and acceptance; one which we must CONSCIOUSLY work hard to overcome. How do we do…

Women Are Eating The Music World.

This is a story about #bias, #diversity, #privilege – and #change. A few years ago, before I warehoused all my CDs because of I was streaming all my music, I spent some time flipping through the disks and memorializing my purchasing decisions. One thing stuck out – most of my music collection was made by men. My wife’s limited collection was nearly all female artists. I had never considered why…

Feelings > Features: An Employee Value Proposition Journey. #EVP #culture #belonging

This recent Gartner article surprises me only in that they seem to find it a new idea that we should focus on how people FEEL about work when defining the employee value proposition (EVP). This shift from FEATURES to feelings feeds into culture work, which is simply reflecting back to stakeholders (colleagues) that which is true, but hidden, overlooked, or misnamed / misattributed. Showcasing a…

“Well, Let Me Just Interrupt You There…”

This cartoon definitely hits close to home. I like to talk, to discuss, debate, and argue. I have opinions and I share them freely. I hope I do so because I have something to add, but that is never certain!  “If you don’t speak up, then your ideas are not heard.” It is a fairly standard approach to workplace dynamics. In recent years, I have worked mainly with women in my team. Female…

Language Learning is An Act of Bravery. What else can you embrace, and win at?

Learning is a lifelong, pivotal attribute. We learn and grow, we are curious about our surroundings. We improve every day. I think and read about learning a lot, but rarely do I come across something that stops me in my tracks (especially on LinkedIn!) But this did. I lived in another country for a few years where I had to painstakingly learn the language. The cognitive load to survive, let…

“I like the wine and not the label”: learning about representation and inclusion.

If you have yet to be persuaded to watch Schitt’s Creek on Netflix, go for it. You will learn a lot about representation and inclusion, whilst also being entertained – a killer combo. Our household finished the 6 seasons and then watched a documentary about the show’s crazy global success, from which I learned 3 valuable lessons about inclusion and belonging. Lesson 1: Being gay does not always…

I was up at 5am this morning, a weekend, after a disrupted night of sleep because a small thing in my room crying every hour, not wanting to be left alone in its bed. We are puppy sitting for 2 weeks, an 8-week lab en route to a Assistance Dog program somewhere in North America. Newly separated from its mother, it is full of micro learning moments, utterly adorable, and incredibly tiring. Now my…

I am doing lots of work around diversity, inclusion and belonging (DIBs) at work. I bring my culture lens to it, rather than a policy one. Diversity is a fact. You either have it or you don’t. When you don’t, you need strategy and policy change. Hiring managers need to think differently, we data mine the situation and look for challenges and localized wins we can model. We say – with some…

A Day Late For Cinco De Mayo.

Last weekend, we were discussing what meals to have this week. Lori is at school in the evenings, so we need to coordinate and plan a bit more than usual at present. “Oh, we should have Mexican for Cinco de Mayo,” says she. “Oh yeah. When is Cinco de Mayo?” I ask innocently. She looks at me incredulously. Mouth agape. “I’m joking!” I reply, unconvincingly. In our diversity and inclusion…

Vaccine Hunters, Attack! I suddenly had FOMO. Getting the vaccine became the critical release.

I have been watching rather enviously the US and UK recover from their terrible decision-making around lockdowns and COVID response to absolutely nail the vaccine roll-out. Meanwhile, in Canada, or at least here in BC, things were been managed very professionally and there was long-term certainty to how we respond – until we got to the vaccines. Slow and steady seems to be the approach, despite…